Charles Grant (politician)

Charles Grant

Charles Grant (born 5 ^{. Jul} / 16th April  1746 ^greg. In Aldourie , Inverness-shire , Scotland, † 31 October 1823 in London ) was a British (trade) politicians evangelical imprint, which campaigns for the Protestant missionary British India began. He linked national political content with Christian humanitarian and emphasized the government duty ("good government") of the British in India, which was represented by the British East India Company , a trading company (!). He demanded that the policy of "non-interference", which had been officially represented until then, be abandoned.

The importance of the person Charles Grant for the missionary work of India is mostly marginalized in the literature and often falls behind the descriptions of individual missionary societies operating in India and his comrade-in-arms William Wilberforces , who campaigned for the abolition of the slave trade (1807) and finally slavery (1833) had started back.

Charles Grant died in London at the age of 77. Charles Grant's eldest son, Charles , born in India, followed his father into politics and was raised to the nobility as Baron Glenelg . His other son, Robert , was a member of parliament and in 1834 became governor of Bombay (now: Mumbai ).

Adolescence and Life in British India

Grant came from an old local family in Aldourie, Inverness-shire , Scotland . He was born on the same day that his father, Alexander Grant, died in the Battle of Culloden , in which he had fought on the Jacobite side against English government forces. He grew up in poor circumstances, went to school for six years and began an apprenticeship with a renowned businessman and shipowner at the age of thirteen. Through the mediation of a cousin he worked from 1763 for the East India Company (East India Company) in London, where he made the decision after five years to go from there to India. In 1786 he reached Calcutta (today: Kolkata), Bengal . There he managed to rise to an influential and respected position within eight years. From 1780 to 1787 he was a trading resident in Malada in north-east Bengal and finally returned to Great Britain in 1790 after 22 years of work, some time after two of his children had developed smallpox and died. After the death of his children, he turned increasingly to faith and tried to set up a private mission as a model experiment on his indigo plantation , but it was unsuccessful. Nevertheless, after his return Grant held on to this idea, which then became more precise with the intention of establishing a mission to India under the official patronage of the East India Company. This demand was unquestionably diametrically opposed to the basic position of the East India Company, which did not want to see its commercial interests hampered or impaired by missionary activity.

Commitment to opening up British India to Mission

Grant hoped to translate his religious beliefs into practical politics, for he had become the closest collaborator and advisor to Lord Cornwallis , the governor general , during his Indian career . He recommended him as an expert in trade policy issues to the governing bodies of the East India Company, whereupon he was elected to the board of directors a short time later and from 1806 alternated chairmanship or representation. Due to the importance of his position, Charles Grant developed into one of the most prominent advocates within the evangelical movement ("Evangelical Movements"), both within the East India Company and in the British Parliament, where he held the constituency of Inverness-shire in the House from 1802 to 1818 of Commons .

Grant had already written an essay in 1792 with the title: Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain, particularly with Respect to their Morals and Means of Improving It in view of the renegotiation of the India Charter in 1793 a proselytizing India in the negotiations. At his side was Parliamentarian William Wilberforce , who had also taken on the abolition of the British slave trade . In the essay he takes stock of the current relationship with the Indian conquests and explains the socio-political motives of his missionary concept. Eight years earlier, he had publicly stated that Indian society had a universal backlog of ethical values ​​and had stated that political reforms must necessarily go hand in hand with moral ones. As early as 1787, together with other proponents of the missionary idea, he had formulated a thesis entitled: A Proposal for Establishing a Protestant Mission in Bengal and Bihar , but had not been able to find open approval. He hoped for this in 1793, but this time too he was disappointed, because his observations were not taken into account in the renewal of the charter of the East India Company and so Grant and Wilberforce continued their efforts for the next twenty years until the next renewal of the Charter 1813 to strengthen the social interest in the mission of India.

After the failure of the parliamentary initiative, British India remained as good as hermetically sealed off for missionaries. An exception was the English Mission , which was associated with the Danish-Halle Mission , and the Baptist mission William Carey founded in 1800, also in a Danish enclave near Calcutta . In the years after 1793, the interest of Grant and Wilberforces, which belonged to the so-called Clapham Sect , focused almost exclusively on the struggle for the liberation of slaves in the West Indian colonies, and they achieved their most important political success in 1807 with the abolition of the slave trade. For the abolition campaign , they had effectively mobilized the public in line with their intentions, a tactic that was ultimately also intended to help the missionary movement break through.

From 1812, a year before the India Charter was passed, they turned their religious convictions into a kind of political program. Grant and Wilberforce launched their interests through mass rallies and signature collections and leveraged the influence of magazines, Bible clubs, and missionary societies. Likewise, the reprint of the Observations Grants was initiated and submitted to Parliament.

Political Implementation of Mission Advocacy Grant

Finally, on June 22, 1813, the resolution was passed by a narrow two-thirds majority in parliament and marked the long-awaited victory for Grant. The reasons for the adoption of the motion were, on the one hand, the massive public relations work and, on the other hand, the more precisely formulated content and concessions that they had made to the Church of England .

The success that the Clapham Sect had in renegotiating the charter was not only of central importance for the evangelicals in general, but also set the trend for the future self-image of British rule in India. However, the steps taken by the British Indian government to implement these resolutions have been very hesitant. Politics initially remained dominated by the principle of "non-interference" and the Anglican Church, which had been represented by a bishop in Calcutta since 1814 , showed no missionary ambitions. The reasons for this were, on the one hand, that England was still at war with France in 1813, and on the other, that it took another five years for Great Britain to gain dominance over the subcontinent .

From 1820 onwards, liberalism increasingly determined the course of British policy on India, and under Lord William Bentinck the ideas of Grant and other social reformers found acceptance. His observations were widespread in evangelical circles until 1820 and were considered an indispensable and authoritative authority in assessing colonial re-holdings, and although they were no longer reprinted after 1832, they remained an important source for those who read about India and wrote the supposed Hinduism .

Importance of the mission and consequences

Ultimately, however, the vision Grant had for India did not come true, because the country did not find its intellectual and religious renewal in Christianity, but responded to this challenge by resorting to its own religious traditions. From the middle of the 19th century, the number of so-called neo-Hindu reform movements increased, and although some of these groups also advocated universalistic approaches that emphasized the equality of all religions, the tendency to "re-interpret" Hinduism prevailed To politicize sense of a nationalist traditionalism . This foundation of national solidarity, borne by Hindus, offered little space for the Muslims in relation to pan-Indian nationalism and colonial freedom struggle and already bore the germ that emerged in the partition of India in 1947 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Grant, Charles (1746-1823). In: Dictionary of National Biography . London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1885-1900.
2. ^ Cf. Ainslie T. Embree: Charles Grant and British rule in India. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1962, pp. 20-24.
3. ↑ Cf. Cornelia Witz: Religious Policy in British India 1793-1813. Christian sense of mission and respect for Hindu tradition in conflict. Stuttgart: Steiner-Verlag-Wiesbaden-GmbH, 1985, pp. 43-46.
4. ^ In: Parliamentary Papers, 1831-32, VIII, Paper 734, General Appendix, Number 1, pp. 3-92.
5. ↑ transl .: Observations on the social condition of the Asian subjects of Great Britain, especially with regard to their morale and the means to improve it. "
6. ↑ transl .: "Proposal for the establishment of a Protestant mission in Bengal and Bihar."
7. ↑ Cf. Cornelia Witz: Religious Policy in British India 1793-1813. Christian sense of mission and respect for Hindu tradition in conflict. Stuttgart: Steiner-Verlag-Wiesbaden-GmbH, 1985, pp. 44-47.
8. ↑ Clapham, now part of London, was a meeting place for politically influential figures who were close to the ideas of the Evangelicals.
9. ↑ Cf. Cornelia Witz: Religious Policy in British India 1793-1813. Christian sense of mission and respect for Hindu tradition in conflict. Stuttgart: Steiner-Verlag-Wiesbaden-GmbH, 1985, pp. 56-58.
10. ^ Cf. Ainslie T. Embree: Charles Grant and British rule in India. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1962, pp. 141-142.
11. ↑ See Hermann Kulke, Dieter Rothermund: History of India. From the Indus culture to today. Munich: CH Beck Verlag, 1998 (1st edition 1982), p. 347.